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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23386024">Maybe This Is Where It Ends (Take A Bow)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fathand/pseuds/fathand'>fathand</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, M/M, more like a hopeful ending but still, what if... james was convicted??</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:20:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,191</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23386024</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fathand/pseuds/fathand</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>James reaches across and takes Oliver’s hand. Raises his palm to his lips. Presses a soft kiss there, then lower down, on his pulse point.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“I’m okay,” he says, whispered against the blue vein like a river running under Oliver’s brown skin.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>It took a lot to get here.</em>
</p>
<p>or: the one where James is convicted instead of Oliver.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Oliver Marks/James Farrow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Maybe This Is Where It Ends (Take A Bow)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For Moony.</p>
<p>I started this when I read the book last summer and Moony said 'hey what if James actually did go to prison instead of Oliver' and I went 'I should write a fic about that' and then seven months later I found the beginning of this in my drafts and decided to finish it. </p>
<p>Title from 'Bad Decisions' by Bastille ie the PERFECT song for this novel.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>James reaches across and takes Oliver’s hand. Raises his palm to his lips. Presses a soft kiss there, then lower down, on his pulse point. </p>
<p>“I’m okay,” he says, whispered against the blue vein like a river running under Oliver’s brown skin. </p>
<p>It took a lot to get here.</p><hr/>
<p>At the beginning, he didn’t dare touch them. One Oliver’s (a peeling paperback with a broken spine and yellowed pages, Oliver’s spidery handwriting in faded pencil down the margins) and one Filippa’s (a hardback with no dust jacket but a navy blue canvas cover and a glued-in ribbon bookmark). </p>
<p>Days went by, then weeks and then months, punctuated only by their visits, beacons shining in the cool-cut darkness. He was locked in this lighthouse and sometimes the light was too close, too bright and unwavering when all he could do was waver himself, and then afterwards he would rock back and forth and hold shaking hands over his eyes. He was blinded and his heart hurt with their absence. (Switch it off, please. Turn it off.) Then he let himself adjust to the dark once more, if you can call the quiet sick of it adjusting. </p>
<p>After all that was done with, he’d read at night, pacing the length of his bed (he didn’t have a cellmate back then). The step of an actor, featherlight and agile, socked feet on linoleum; his words mouthed, the occasional click of his tongue; far off sounds, indistinguishable in the night, and closer sounds, terrifying; the incessant buzz of hallway light bulbs. The show must go on.</p>
<p>He performed to the walls, an echo of a past life and an echo of a false future. The paperback, light and trembling in his hands, light and trembling in his mouth. The dryness of it, thin pages sucking and stealing; for hours and hours, he couldn’t stop. Night after night till he sat opposite Oliver once more, pushed it across the short distance between them. Take it. Keep it. Keep these memories, keep my heart and my eyes and my ribs. Take this from me: my voice, my talent, my love. (Oh, it burns now like he never thought it would.)</p>
<p>Oliver had slipped it into his bag, darkened eyes noticing the set of James’ jaw. </p>
<p>Shakespeare had become his enemy. He puked up bile and ink-printed words, an ancient typeface; he swallowed verbs and nouns and then let them fall, iambic pentameter spilling into the toilet bowl. Metal reflected his sullen face, his bird nervous eyes. He thought <em>no one can see this</em>. He thought <em>no one can know</em>. He wiped vomit from his chin. But who was there left? </p>
<p>Shakespeare lay dormant. But Homer? Surely he could stomach that. </p>
<p>Filippa’s copy was pristine and perfect, white pages clean and undirtied by the thick, swollen memories that pressed up against James’ temples and threatened to burst. The taste of them left a black residue in his mouth. The acid of his vomit was preferable.</p>
<p>Odysseus sat, weeping by the sea. James knew of his pain. <em>Nostos</em>, longing for home. (He knows he wouldn’t be welcome there now. He knows there is no home to return to.)</p>
<p>(Nothing beside remains.)</p>
<p>And yet - and yet, the clean sweep of the ocean; water (his enemy, his only friend). James had nothing to do but read. A performance, so long ago, the weaving and the shape of it. Odysseus dances for the Phaeacians, hunches over for those wretched suitors, spins the bow like Penelope’s shroud and - gasp! A surprise! The swell of it, the smell of it; the blood in the banquet hall. Feast on this. White bone and whiter eyes and then red like the gutting of a fish.</p>
<p>(He changed his mind, laid Homer down to rest, a shared grave for the two of them like lovers entwined in the dirt. The two Bards. He’d had enough.)</p>
<p>James learned, against all odds, to keep quiet.</p>
<p>After he stopped reading, he was assigned to the library. The irony left his skin singing but at least it was safer, calmer, more honest. He wouldn’t open the books past the first page, just peeled back the cover, pressed a stamp like a brand and moved on without a word. It didn’t do well to draw attention to oneself. Not here, not ever. Curtains drawn, audience scattered. He sank beneath the stage and began to sweep up the rest of it: the life he would never have, the person he would never become.</p>
<p>And against all odds, it got easier.</p>
<p>His dance became a new one, not quick-fingered, quick-lipped, but instead a clockwork of up and down and slow. Wake up when required, go there when told to. Keep your head low. You’re a military kid now, son. A soldier among the ranks of nameless faces, histories a blur and a nuisance. Bend over backwards, shut your mouth, back straight and eyes up and don’t you dare look away from me.</p>
<p>This lighthouse glowing gloomy in the dark; repeat it over and over and over, the same circle around the same promise of light.</p>
<p>He did it because he didn’t have a choice.</p><hr/>
<p>“You look better,” Oliver says, and for the first time James detects no lie. He does feel better, though better isn’t much. (God, at least it’s something.)</p>
<p>“Enough about me,” James replies, although they’ve barely even started, “how are you? How is everyone?”</p>
<p>Oliver holds his hand and tentatively describes life on the outside. Not much has changed since his last visit, at least the things that one might expect to matter, but Oliver knows what James really wants to know. <em>I know you. You know me.</em> Knowing and loving are often the same thing.</p>
<p>The ingredients of the pasta sauce he made last week. The light bulb bursting in his shabby apartment; the ozone stink of it and the glass like glitter. His new IKEA sheets, soft cotton, white and pure. He tripped and scraped his knee in the parking lot of a CVS and so he went back inside and bought a disinfectant wipe and a Band-Aid and he sat in his car and fixed himself up, hissed only slightly as the wipe left a sting and then he drove back to his shabby apartment and ate the leftover pasta. </p>
<p>This saccharine mundanity and all it leaves in its wake. </p>
<p><em>I want to kiss the garlic from your lips,</em> James thinks. <em>I want to clean your wounds with these hands. I don’t want to make a mess of things.</em></p>
<p>He often thinks of Oliver’s shabby apartment at night. He lies silent in his cell and tries to picture it, over and over and over, this same circle. (He can never make up his mind about the colour of the walls. Oliver said <em>off-white</em> and didn’t question why he asked, nor did he elaborate. It’s hard to imagine without seeing.)</p>
<p>Oliver speaks of it with slight disdain and a thick layer of guilt. James watches him swallow around it, struggle with the weight of his tongue. </p>
<p><em>It’s okay,</em> he wants to say but instead his grip on the poor man’s hand just grows tighter. <em>You don’t deserve this. You deserve high ceilings and wide bay windows and marble countertops. But I deserve this, I do, I do.</em></p>
<p>He thinks of that poem and he thinks of the paradox of it, like a battle raging relentlessly behind his eyes. He could fall down to his knees, reach up to God with the frenzy of a bacchant, hold his breath and count to one hundred and it would never be enough. He hates it but he loves it so. This pale creature, the arching of the spine and the curl of each toe; this soft animal that purrs something violent. Oliver speaks with guilt but James has let it consume him and sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps him going. </p>
<p>
  <em>I am here for a reason.</em>
</p>
<p>Don’t let this reason break you. Don’t let it leave you either. </p>
<p>(Think of the reason, yes, but don’t think of the man. The other R-word. Don’t - stop, stop, don’t - the wet crunch, the moon like an eye watching like God above like the heavens holding out a large hand that wraps around his throat like the throat of this man before him white and long and thick and gasping and the water around them the water that burns the water that rises like fire so bright like the moon so bright and watching like a hawk with talons so sharp and they cut like the hook don’t - stop. Don’t think about it. Don’t think of him.)</p>
<p>“Soon, right James?” </p>
<p>Oliver looks down at the table with a tight-lipped smile and James thinks he has never seen anyone so beautiful and so brave.</p>
<p>“Yes. Soon.”</p>
<p>When Oliver leaves the light turns off and once more James is left in the dark.</p><hr/>
<p>They lie in the dark.</p>
<p>There is a cracked ceiling above them and James looks up, up, tries to make out the spider-web pattern, strains his eyes doing so. They are not touching, not presently. Oliver’s breathing is even but shallow, relaxed but not asleep.</p>
<p>The noises are odd. The air conditioning unit hums. There are no clangs or shouts. Outside, the occasional car passes and James imagines getting up, leaving this shabby apartment, walking down the stairs and out onto the street, all ghost-like in these borrowed pyjamas. Moving from the gentle blue-black of this off-white apartment at night, to the soft amber of the streetlight outside. A change in scenery, a change in routine. He weeps. </p>
<p>The walls are a sort of eggshell, a sort of yellowed cream, utterly disgusting and hard to describe. He cannot put it into words and he cannot put into words what he felt upon seeing them. He wept then too, just earlier today. He is a grown man and the walls made him weep.</p>
<p>And against all odds, he was held. </p>
<p>And now in the darkness, he is held. </p>
<p>The soft length of an arm and the press of a body against his. He falls asleep.</p><hr/>
<p>James jumps out of bed and hurries down the stairs and Oliver stands behind him and says ‘Where are you going?’ ‘I am going to the zoo.’ ‘There is no zoo near here!’ but there is, so he runs and the two large suns rise hurriedly like eyes blinking open or two pale heads gasping for air as they burst through the surface of the water. The birds start to fall as it’s that time of the year again and they splatter against the ground and the sound of each one goes THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! like the whacking of a punching bag at a fairground but crunchier and there is no prize to be won. When James gets to the zoo, it is a lighthouse and he hurries up the stairs and Oliver stands behind him and says ‘how will you get all the way up there?’ and James looks up and realises the stairs reach to heaven and he says ‘I want to see the animals’ and runs and runs and runs until he gets to the top and meets God who is one large ring and around Him are six tigers all dancing and they look at James but instead of eyes they have rings and the rings twist and become the lights of twelve lighthouses and they beckon him to shore. When he gets to the shore, Richard is there and he has no eyes and no rings and he says ‘look what you have done’ ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry’ but Richard can’t hear him because his ears are not attached to his head and instead they are in his hands like two chewed up wads of bubble gum all mangled and pink. The birds keep falling and they hit James on the head and on his back and so he goes back inside Oliver’s shabby apartment and into the kitchen where Oliver is making scrambled eggs that are the colour of the walls except the kitchen is James’ cell and the ceiling is cracked and a large spider climbs out from the heavens and eats them both whole. And inside the spider’s tummy Oliver says ‘I knew this would happen’ ‘Well then why didn’t you say something?’ ‘Because you wouldn’t have listened’ ‘I would have’ ‘No, you wouldn’t’ ‘I would’ ‘No, you never do’.</p><hr/>
<p>When he wakes up, he is not alone. He is lying on plain white IKEA sheets and the ceiling above him is cracked like a spider-web but there is no spider to be found. </p>
<p>Oliver holds his hand, brushes a kiss to his temple and lies next to him in the light.</p>
<p>At some point, James gets up and pees. He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror for a long time, a grown man with a young face and eyes with dark, dark rings below them. He drifts into the kitchen, all ghost-like, and Oliver is making scrambled eggs.</p>
<p>James thinks and finds that, against all odds, he is loved.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><em>Nothing beside remains</em> is, of course, a reference to Shelley's 'Ozymandias' because I am a basic bitch. </p>
<p>The poem James directly mentions is Mary Oliver's 'Wild Geese'. Read it and weep.</p>
<p>I also owe the pasta sauce idea to Richard Siken's 'I Had A Dream About You' because pasta is gay, guys. Sorry, I don't make the rules.</p>
<p>Comments and kudos are food for the soul. Thank you reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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